and i will protect you from everything
by fiatlux3721
Summary: Despite their differences, Ike and Soren somehow remain best friends through high school. Soren helps him with calculus and Ike protects him from his tormentors. Rated T for language.


For Soren, high school was an agonizing, unbearable hell, punctuated only by the briefest of less painful moments. These included the ringing of the final bell, his AP Classical Literature class, and the once-weekly lunches with Ike.

Ike was a godsend and a curiosity. Through several bizarre twists of fate, Soren had ended up living with him and his family. He was handsome, an honors student (with Soren's coaching), and captain of the football team. _And somehow_, Soren thought wryly as he watched the boy walk by, trailing a harem of girls, _he's my best friend_.

"Hey, Soren!" he called enthusiastically as he walked by, eliciting a flurry of negative chitter from his female companions.

"Ikey, why do you talk to him?" one trilled concernedly as they passed on. Soren buried his nose in a book and resolved to become less annoying to his friend. Surely the beef he'd get from his girlfriend _du jour_ would push him over the precipitous edge on their friendship this time.

The most profound of the many evils of high school was that of PE class. With every flick of a wrapped towel that stung his exposed back, with every dodgeball that plowed into his groin like a comet hurled from Ashera's hand, he cursed whatever bloated senators who had signed into effect a law making physical education required in schools.

He wondered, as he was elbowed and shoved into the back of the line, why Ike chose to associate himself with these lunks, but Soren himself at the same time. He wondered why the only times these overlarge monkeys could coordinate themselves was in surprisingly strategic, effective methods of tormenting him. He loathed that fact that this hateful class was the only thing holding his 4.0 GPA from becoming so much more. Worst of all was the locker room, when he was forced to expose himself, blinding scars, lamentably scrappy figure and all, to these most cruel denizens of Holy Goddess Ashera High School.

"Hey, Soren, do you want to eat lunch with us?" Soren looked up from his sprouts sandwich and book. Ike was waiting with his current girlfriend, some vapid, high-born, green-haired girl who called herself "Ellie". Her wrinkled nose and confused stare at Ike was enough to dissuade Soren yet again.

"No, thank you, not today." Ike shrugged.

"Suit yourself." Soren watched them go from over the edge of his book. There was a strange, seething weight in the pit of his stomach as he watched the flip of the girl's hair, her fawning adoration over his friend. He bit his lip, chased the feeling off, contented himself with knowing that Friday was the day Ike always chased other friends off and set aside time to eat with his best friend, as he put it. He'd been feeling an odd covetousness, he realized, for a few weeks now, when others beside _him_ got to bask in the light of the head of the football team, and, as the girls all knew, the hottest guy in school. _Not that I think that!_ Soren thought, shaking his head in subconcious distress. Besides, later, when the day was over and football practice done, he and Ike would go home, and Elena would have dinner waiting and he'd help Ike grind his way through calculus with a B.

Later, Soren was in the only place in the school in which he didn't feel threatened by jocks. The library. He walked in and smiled slightly, relishing one of the benefits of attending Our Goddess (private) High. He disregarded the senile, bumbling librarian, his literacy having overtaken hers sometime his freshman year. He went to the back where the rarer books were held; he needed one for an AP English project.

"The _Necronomicon_," he muttered to himself, pulling out an old tome. "'Not reccommended for those under the age of insanity'." He scoffed and began to read it, slipping off shoes under the table as he waited for Ike to finish with practice.

He hadn't yet succumbed to the horrors of the tome, when a very physical and real danger crept up around him. A group of virile lacrosse players sauntered towards him, making to encircle the table like a parody of choreography from some old gangster musical. A bead of sweat crept down his temple as he stared harder at the book; yet this had happened so many times, he knew that pretending to ignore it never made it go away. The leader's hand slammed down on the table, and Soren was startled yet again, the _Necronomicon _flying out of his hands.

"Whatcha doing, fag? Waitin' for your _boyfriend?_" Soren's eyes flew open. _That's a new one_, he thought. Then, _why the hell does that get to me so much?_ He cursed the vast library, the tuned-out librarian, the fact that football practice had to get out _fifteen minutes later_ than lacrosse, and that Ike would doubtlessly spend another fifteen before coming to pick up Soren to go home.

"Oh, come on, don't think you can hide it, homo. We seen the way you look at our man Ike. How you look like a fightin' man when his girl's with him. He told us that he wants us to take care of you." Soren blinked.

"That's a lie," he said blankly, already tensed in preparation for a beating, scraping underneath the table in desperation.

"That's what they all say. Come on, men." As he was lifted up by his shirtfront, the first of surely many blows to come sinking into his chest, it occurred to him that this was comparatively a light beating for what he'd once gotten, where those scars criss-crossing him had come from. He would have bleated for help, but the downside to favoring the more remote parts of the school was that no one could hear him yelling. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest in some faint attempt at protection, wondering when it would be over. In moments like these, he'd taught himself to detach from his body, and return when Elena was applying a cold cloth to his forehead and hydrogen peroxide to his cuts.

Suddenly one of his attackers went flying over the table and headlong into the bookshelf behind him. The head of the one grabbing his shirtfront was slammed into the table with a resounding thud, and the rest quickly abandoned their pursuit of Soren and quivered up against the table, backed into place by an enraged, glowering Ike. Soren slumped back onto the table, mind snapping back into place far too early.

_Ow_, he thought as blood ran down his face, staining his shirtfront.

"Goddess alive," Ike roared, "why can't you bastards pick on someone your own size?" Two more of the assailants were felled by massive, unavoidable fists to the face, slumping to the library floor like bad guys in an old superhero movie. Before Ike could get to them, two more bolted from the room as though the hounds of hell were on their heels.

"Goddess, Soren, are you all right?" Ike offered Soren a hand off the table, and he steadied himself and immediately pinched his nose to stop the flow of blood. His sweater was ruined.

"Thanks," he murmured, moving to collect his things with a hand. His head was fuzzed over in pain and confusion, and he moved slowly. Ike sighed and scratched the back of his head.

"No, really. Did those assholes hurt you? At all? You could pres—" Soren slung his pack over his shoulder, still holding his nose with one hand.

"No. Ike, please, let's just…" Ike ground his teeth.

"I can't let them get _away_ with that, Soren! I—" Soren shook his head and began limping out of the library.

"It doesn't work, Ike. They do regardless." Ike sighed, knowing it was the truth.

"All right, Soren. Let's go home." Ike held the door on the way out of the library, no librarian to be found, and they made their way out to his car, a beat-up old truck.

When they got home, Elena had spaghetti waiting.


End file.
